The Transformative Power of Boats: Seafaring and Social Complexity in Indigenous California and Hokkaido

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Negotiating Watery Worlds: Impacts and Implications of the Use of Watercraft in Small-Scale Societies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

One critical aspect of complex watercraft is their transformative power to amplify the impacts of social connections with distant places by allowing for longer, larger, and more frequent interactions. In many small-scale and indigenous societies, the use of advanced boats allowed for communities to impact regions far beyond their own boundaries, affecting historical trajectories both at home and abroad. This paper compares two different traditions of sewn plank canoe use from opposite sides of the Pacific: costal California and northern Japan. These case studies are united by striking similarities in the technology used in boat construction as well as the extent and importance of open-ocean travel. In both areas, canoe construction was sponsored by local elites and involved both high-value materials as well as elaborate launching rituals. We argue that the innovation of sewn-plank boat technology in both regions allowed for longer and faster voyages, greatly expanding the ability of local leaders to control and conduct trading and raiding voyages to distant locations. Examining parallels in how complex watercraft in California and Japan contributed to social changes in each region can assist with identifying similar patterns in small-scale maritime societies around the world.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Negotiating Watery Worlds: Impacts and Implications of the Use of Watercraft in Small-Scale Societies   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36090.0